On the Inadequacy of the Ethnic/Civic Antinomy: The Language Politics of Bulgarian Nationalism

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Notes

Following Yuval-Davis's emphasis on multiple and contradictory conceptions of the nation competing within a given polity, the caveat follows that the expansive cultural enfranchisement of the Bulgarian speakers in the interwar period did not involve similar initiatives towards the minority populations, especially the Muslims. Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation.

Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism.

Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism.

Kohn, Prophets and Peoples.

Nairn, The Break-up of Britain; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; Anderson, Imagined Communities.

Étiene Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” New Left Review 13, no. 3, 334, qtd. in Özkırımlı, Theories of Nationalism, 1990.

Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 15.

Greenfeld, Nationalism, distinguishes between Western civic-territorial and Eastern ethnic-genealogical nationalisms.

The exception that proves the rule in this case is Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed.

Sugar and Lederer, Nationalism in Eastern Europe; Sugar, Eastern European Nationalism in the 20th Century.

King, “The Nationalization of East Central Europe.”

Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania; Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations.

Brown, The Past in Question; Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism; Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood; Ballinger, History in Exile.

Deak et al., The Politics of Retribution in Europe; Judt, Postwar.

Miller and Rieber, Imperial Rule; Brown, Imperial Legacy; Hagen and Barkey, After Empire.

To be fair, Greenfeld is very careful to qualify and moderate her claims (Nationalism, 17, 25–26).

Ibid., 22–23.

See Maria Todorova, “The Course and Discourses of Bulgarian Nationalism,” in Sugar, Eastern European Nationalism, who applies the methodology of Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe.

Gyllin, The Genesis of the Modern Bulgarian Literary Language, 13.

This position is similar to the language reforms of Vuk Karadžić and Adamantios Koraïs in the Serbian and Greek contexts.

Georgieva et al., Istoriia na novobîlgarskiia knizhoven ezik, 45, 92–94.

Ibid., 93. Diatopia and syntopia refer to the standardization of the dialectical basis of the language.

Dunavski lebed, no. 7 (1860), cited in Georgieva et al., Istoriia, 173.

Liuben Karavelov is another of the great revolutionary figures who exerted a significant influence on the Bulgarian literary scene. The chairman of the Central Revolutionary Committee in Bucharest, he edited major émigré journals and newspapers such as Svoboda and Nezavisimost, and published novels and short stories.

Gyllin, Genesis, 29.

One of the sites of public involvement was the chitalishte, the reading room for the general public that was widespread in Bulgarian towns and villages.

Gyllin, Genesis, 31, 108.

Ibid., 31.

On the one hand the Tîrnovo School preserved the traditional placement of the letters Ъ, Ь, while on the other, the ur/ru and ul/lu variation, reflected the vernacular pronunciation.

Pundeff. “The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,” 372–73.

Velev, Prosvetna i kulturna politika na pravitelstvoto na Aleksandîr Stamboliiski, 96.

One of these, the , served as a bridge across the dialectal divide separating Bulgaria along a north–south axis. Its double value could be read either as [e] or [ia].

Autonomous Bulgaria was de facto independent after the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, but under Ottoman suzerainty. Formal independence was not proclaimed until 1908.

The debates of the 1890s can be seen as a dress rehearsal for the 1921–1923 conflict.

Andreichin, Iz istoriiata na nasheto ezikovo stroitelstvo, 163–64.

To give a sense of the significance of this holiday, the guests included the king, the mayor of Sofia, distinguished academicians, and the cream of the political class. On the other hand, the agrarian regime regarded these elements with warranted distrust as corrupt oppressors of the peasant classes.

See Arnaudov, Istoriia na Sofiiskiia universitet sv. Kliment Okhridski prez pîrvoto mu polustoletie; Naumov, Istoriia na Sofiiskia universitet “Kliment Okhridski.”

Although the rector was technically a ministerial employee, the administrative council argued for his inviolability under the terms of the autonomous statute of the university.

Omarchevski had granted exceptions for editions of the works of Ivan Vazov, Georgi Rakovski, and a few others. For the blow-by-blow account that forms the basis of the narrative, see Naumov, Istoriia, 104–12. Arnaudov's Istoriia is indispensable as a collection of primary sources because it includes the relevant correspondence in full.

Bell, Peasants in Power, 180.

Naumov, Istoriia, 107.

Ibid., 108–09.

Velev, Prosvetna i kulturna politika na pravitelstvoto na Aleksandur Stamboliisk, 100–03. The sanctions included the shutting down of any guilty periodical publication for a period of one to three months, the firing of administrative functionaries at fault, and a one- to three-month jail time with a fine of up to 20,000 leva for private individuals.

Rusinov, Istoriia na bîlgarskiia pravopis, 86.

Velev, Prosvetna i kulturna politika na pravitelstvoto na Aleksandur Stamboliisk, 99.

Rusinov, Istoriia na bîlgarskiia pravopis, 90.

Velev, Prosvetna i kulturna politika na pravitelstvoto na Aleksandur Stamboliisk, 99–100.

Velev's description is of a later debate, March 1922, when the same ministerial council affirmed its previous decision concerning the . The occasion was the transformation of the orthographic directive into law.

Ibid., 102.

Rusinov, Istoriia na bîlgarskiia pravopis, 93.

Andreichin, Iz istoriiata na nasheto ezikovo stroitelstvo, 167.

Rusinov, Istoriia na bîlgarskiia pravopis, 95.

Ibid., 93.

Petrova, Bîlgarskiiat Zemedelski Naroden Sîiuz, 1899–1944, 95.

Rusinov, Istoriia na bîlgarskiia pravopis, 92–93; Velev, Prosvetna i kulturna politika na pravitelstvoto na Aleksandur Stamboliisk, 103, 125–28.

Velev, Prosvetna i kulturna politika na pravitelstvoto na Aleksandur Stamboliisk, 103–04, 109, 111, 122.

The only difference was the concession to use the only in cases where the dialectal variance had been preserved, rather than in the strict etymological placement demanded by the 1899 rules.

Until 1930 Bulgarian-language materials published in the USSR utilized the original recommendation of the Orthographic Commission rather than the slightly altered version backed by Stamboliiski.

Rusinov, Istoriia na novobîlgarskiia knizhoven ezik, 444. An example is the article by Georgi Bakalov, “Is the Orthographic Question Moot?” (1927), which examines the Tsankov orthography as a means to isolate the workers from political life and cultural benefits. Rusinov, Istoriia na bîlgarskiia pravopis, 107.

The early phase of the Fatherland Front of 1945 was a coalition of left-of-center parties that, along with the communists, included BANU.